In Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, between the categories of virgin and whore lies a void rather than a spectrum. The three leading ladies of the play Hellena, Florinda and Angellica most certainly fall into these categories; Hellena and Florinda being virginal ladies of quality and Angellica being a famous courtesan. These three women attempt to challenge these roles throughout the play. Aphra Behn uses the domination of the men over the women, the objectification of the women and the double standards that exist between men and women to illustrate the impossibility of taking one’s sexuality into one’s own hands, and challenging the assigned roles of the patriarchal society for the female characters in the play. The male characters in “The Rover” …show more content…
However, Florinda does not argue against the marriage to Antonio saying that she “has no defense to Antonio’s love” (879) because the only reason she does not want to be with him is her own feelings, which unfortunately do not account for much. Once their brother leaves, Florinda devises a plan to meet with Belville, in hopes of running away with him. She goes to the carnival in disguise and slips Belville a letter instructing him to come to “the Garden-Gate” (885) at “ten at night.” (885) The fact that Florinda must go to the trouble of disguising herself, sneaking out to a carnival, and slipping Belville a note filled with instructions just to meet with him against her brothers wishes, illustrates just how difficult it was for women to rebel against the men who control their lives. In “The Rover”, Female identity and value are indivisible from female sexuality. There are only three roles a woman can take, and all of them are directly related to a women’s sexuality. Women are classified as either women of quality, or whores, and can either be wives, nuns or prostitutes. Because being a prostitute is not a respectable option, the women of quality in the play are valued far more. In fact many of the men in the play express disgust at the fact that a women would …show more content…
The double standards for men and women regarding sexuality in “The Rover” become especially apparent when looking at the ending of the play. Willmore is an incredibly sexually liberated character. He spends almost the entirety of the play chasing after women. He chases after Florinda in the garden calling her a “fine wench” (903) and chases after her yet again later in the play calling her a “woman of excellent mein,” (924) while also spending the entirety of the play flirting with both Hellena and Angellica. Willmore is a rake figure,wanting “all the honey of Matrimony, but none of the sting,” (900) meaning that he wants sex without commitment. He is inconstancy embodied and both of the women who are interested in him are aware of this. Angellica exclaims that “there is no faith in anything he says” (922) and when Hellena makes Willmore swear never to see any women but her again, she knows that her efforts are futile saying “Now what a wicked creature am I, to damn a proper fellow.” (903) Yet Willmore is not punished for his inconstancy and sexual liberation, in fact he is rewarded with Hellena who is beautiful, a wealthy woman of quality, and “of
In the plays female sexuality is not expressed variously through courtship, pregnancy, childbearing, and remarriage, as it is in the period. Instead it is narrowly defined and contained by the conventions of Petrarchan love and cuckoldry. The first idealizes women as a catalyst to male virtue, insisting on their absolute purity. The second fears and mistrusts them for their (usually fantasized) infidelity, an infidelity that requires their actual or temporary elimination from the world of men, which then re-forms [sic] itself around the certainty of men’s shared victimization (Neely 127).
The band of characters is drawn from every level of the class system. Unique interactions among characters from different social standings are conveyed, from the distressed, kindly gardener, to the impertinent daughter of the village innkeeper, to the prosperous de Luce family, and to the royalty. What appealed to me was that Flavia could trace her family’s history back many generations, and for one to be able to make these personal connections is extremely rare. Of course, this awareness of their past is correlated to the de Luce’s chain of affluence.
“Disrespect towards women” occurs many times during the play. In my opinion, women should not be disrespected just as much as men shouldn’t and especially not the way that they show this in the play. One case of disrespect
Dorabella, like Eve, falls for the deception easily, but Fiordiligi, like Adam, is a bit more resilient but gives in when, Dorabella the Eve says it is harmless to Fiordiligi. Both of the women could not help themselves; the desire overcame the “love”. Deception is continuous in this play. Even Despina the maid is in disguise to help the men for her own desire of money. Don Alfonso was the one that urged, that tempted the two young men’s minds of whose “love” was more pure and faithful.
In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s, women are expressed as powerful people, but there are also women who are submissive to men. Women are held to the expectation of men as sex objects, but to society have the expectation of being virgin and wholesome. “...spinning his tale on how it would be, with all the men scared and all the beautiful young girls panting after me.” (Kesey 187) These whores have been placed into the role of appeasing men, and doing what men want. This outlines how women are treated as objects. “‘A woman like this. A cheap! Low! Painted-’ ‘Courtesan’” (Kesey 266) In this situation Billy took advantage of Candy, and the
In Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, she presents a number of very interesting facts regarding the ways that the sexual imagery of men and women respectively are used in the world of film. One such fact is that of the man as the looker and the female as the looked upon, she argues that the woman is always the object of reifying gaze, not the bearer if it. And “[t]he determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to be connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (487). Mulvey makes the claim that women are presented and primped into this role of “to-be-looked-at-ness”. They are put into films for this purpose and for very little other purposes. However, this argument cannot be incorporated with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; the existence of women in the film is extremely insignificant to an extent that could be considered absent. “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,” male serves as the dominant figures with which the viewer can identify, women only appear in the film for a very short moment of time. For instance, the appearance of women is only shown when Howard rescues the ill child in the village and his return to the village for hospitality reception...
Nora and Mrs. Wright’s social standing when compared to the men in each play is inferior. Both works expose their respective male characters’ sexist view of women diminishing the women’s social standing. Each work features egotistical men who have a severely inflated view of their self-worth when compared to their female counterparts. The men’s actions and words indicate they believe women are not capable of thinking intelligently. This is demonstrated in “Trifles” when Mr. Hale makes the statement about women only worrying about mere trifles. It is also apparent in “A Dollhouse” when Torvalds thinks his wife is not capable of thinking with any complexity (Mazur 17). Another common attribute is of the women’s social standing is displayed as both women finally get tired of feeling like second class citizens and stand up to the repressive people in the women’s lives (Mulry 294). Although both women share much in common in their social standing there subtle differences. Torvald’s sexist view of Nora is more on a personal level in “A Dollhouse” while the male characters’ sexist views in “Trifles” seem to be more of a social view that women are not very smart and their opinions are of little value. This attitude is apparent in “Trifles” as Mr. Hale and Mr. Henderson’s comments about Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping (Mulry 293). As the women in both works reach their emotional
The relationship between male and females within literary works can be expressed in a variety of different ways. Often times, gender roles are solidified to present the man as a dominant and overpowering figure, where the woman is seen as nurturing and are many times objectified due to this nature. In “Poof”, the reader is presented with an example of a woman who is ‘too accepting’ and ‘too giving’ to her male spouse, where as in “Good and Gone”, a male protagonist shatters the dominating nature of the standardized gender roles by loving a woman based off of common interest, not based off of submissive nature. Comparing these two protagonists of both plays, the writers, EP3C and Lynn Nottage, present a duality of dramatic effects by either
Throughout the plays, the reader can visualize how men dismiss women as trivial and treat them like property, even though the lifestyles they are living in are very much in contrast. The playwrights, each in their own way, are addressing the issues that have negatively impacted the identity of women in society.
In her transformation of the well-known fable "Little Red Riding Hood," Angela Carter plays upon the reader's familiarity. By echoing elements of the allegory intended to scare and thus caution young girls, she evokes preconceptions and stereotypes about gender roles. In the traditional tale, Red sticks to "the path," but needs to be rescued from the threatening wolf by a hunter or "woodsman." Carter retells the story with a modern perspective on women. By using fantasy metaphorically and hyperbolically, she can poignantly convey her unorthodox and underlying messages.
In the opening of both the play and the novel we are introduced to the two main female characters which we see throughout both texts. The authors’ styles of writing effectively compare and contrast with one another, which enables the reader to see a distinct difference in characters, showing the constrictions that society has placed upon them.
Many different depictions of gender roles exist in all times throughout the history of American culture and society. Some are well received and some are not. When pitted against each other for all intents and purposes of opposition, the portrayal of the aspects and common traits of masculinity and femininity are separated in a normal manner. However, when one gender expects the other to do its part and they are not satisfied with the results and demand more, things can shift from normal to extreme fairly quickly. This demand is more commonly attributed by the men within literary works. Examples of this can be seen in Tennessee Williams' “A Streetcar Named Desire”, where Stella is constantly being pushed around and being abused by her drunken husband Stanley, and also in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, where the female narrator is claimed unfit by her husband as she suffers from a sort of depression, and is generally looked down on for other reasons.
Gender roles and inequality are still evolving and continue to change. It has only been not that long ago that women started to break out their outlined roles and looked at about the same or- almost the same level- as men on a wide scale basis. Indeed, some women in certain parts of the world are still represented in the same way as in both plays that will be compared in this essay. The characters in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House highlight the challenges of gender roles. The attention focused on points of comparison and contrast of men vs women's reactions in the course of both plays, which, allow the audience to think about gender identity and role conflicts. The other common shared view in both plays is that they are both showcased from a female perspective.
Since the beginning of time, women have been seen as different from men. Their beauty and charms have been interpreted as both endearing and deadly to men. In the Bible, it was Eve’s mistake that led to humanity’s exile from the Garden of Eden. However, unlike in the Bible, in today’s world, women who drive men to ruin do not do so through simple mistakes and misunderstandings, they do so while fully aware of what effects their sexuality can cause. One thing remains constant through these portrayals of women, and that is that they are portrayed as flawed creations and therefore monstrous. It is a woman’s sex drive and sexuality that can lead to her monstrosity. The femme fatale is an enticing, exquisitely beautiful, erotic character who plays the ultimate trick of nature: she displays her beauty, captures the man and goes in for the kill. Films such as Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction and stories such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and Sir Gawain the Green Knight use the femme fatale as a means of making a woman into a monster; the femme fatale can never win in the battle of the sexes. But what is it that makes the femme fatale such a dangerously character for the hero as well as the readers or viewers?
In Aphra Behn's “The Rover,” characters define relationships as a type of economy where value and use are key. This time period commodified love and sexuality, valuing financial success over meaningful relationships. The dowry system made rich women with a high status most desirable for marriage and their value was increased by their honor. Typical of seventeenth century literature, Behn plays with this ideology as “the language of love in Restoration comedies frequently draws on the language of commerce.”1 She expresses her beliefs on the “'interest,' 'credit,' and 'value'”2 associated with love and sexuality through the different prices placed on her characters. Where Behn differs from other seventeenth century writers is that she does not give in to the “world dominated by male writers working in specifically misogynistic forms.”3 She gives women the authority within this economy. Instead of having very little power in their relationships with men, Behn allows women to be dominant. They can create their own value and control the amount of access men have to them. Characters such as Moretta and Angellica Bianca are not forced into submission by their desire for marriage, they “ignore[s] patriarchal structure and exhibit[s] no remorse.”4 They force men into submission through their manipulation of the economy of love and sexuality. Aphra Behn's characterization of Moretta and Angellica Bianca using the language of commerce gives them authority that other woman did not have access to.